


Thanks for Donating!

by Rick_KTish



Series: Rick's Linked Universe things [5]
Category: Linked Universe-- Fandom, The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms
Genre: Multi, blood donation edition, customer service au, i succumb easily to peer pressure, what am I even doing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-14 07:55:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28542153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rick_KTish/pseuds/Rick_KTish
Summary: A Linked Universe Blood Collections AU. Insp by "What Happens at Festival Foods" by Don'tjudgemyfanfichistory. It's?? Cathartic??? but also.... i get the feeling i'm going to have regrets. huh. Oh well.
Series: Rick's Linked Universe things [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1668484
Comments: 6
Kudos: 24





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [What goes down at Festival Foods](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27580091) by [Dontjudgemyfanfichistory](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dontjudgemyfanfichistory/pseuds/Dontjudgemyfanfichistory). 



In the same mode as What Happens at Festival Foods, most of the characters here have a 1:1 equivalent for any given blood drive. They will not necessarily be the same person all the time from real life, but all of these things have actually happened. It's 9 pm on a Sunday night and I have another overnighter tomorrow and have not the power to resist whining about work. (I promise I love my job, but also.... *incoherent shrieking* is pretty much a constant in my brain whenever work comes up so. uh. yeah.)

Also, to the people I know at work who know about this account: _hi. Why are you actually reading this. please don't tell campbell, this is just a place to put the things we all whine about to each other every day anyway. i'm not putting it on facebook like you know who i'm talking about. this is purely cathartic rambling, your name has been changed here too._

Cast (I'll add on as I figure out more about whose names i'm slapping where): 

Time: Central team supervisor. Spends a lot of time on blood drives replacing staff who have called off. Tries to be responsible, but has also been here _way too long_ and has PTO coming out of his ears, so regularly disappears for two or three weeks at a time to use it up.  
  
Warriors: Northern staff. Charge. Has the best seasonal playlists, spends most of his time correcting sticks/making adjustments and writing nonconformances (“problems”) on people.  
  


Twilight: Southern staff. Charge. He’s the fun one, and the one you want on your side if you have to talk a donor down. “They can shout at me all day, but if you mess with one of my kids? Spirits help you.” Plays only country music, but it’s the stuff from like the early 2000s that was about parenting and patriotism instead of drinking and cheating.  
  


Four: Northern staff. Sometimes a charge, usually an OJI, and he gets all the charge questions because he’s been there so long. He knows _all_ the ropes and can and will pull up procedure to prove you wrong, but only if you irritate him.

Legend: Northern staff. OJI and Charge, but calls off so often no one knows why he gets assigned anymore. At least he doesn’t leave in the middle of shifts anymore since Hyrule started crying one day when he was trying to walk out during a 14-donor hour.

Sky: Southern staff. OJI and Charge, but part time, so they rarely see him.

Wild: Central staff. Driver. Feels very strongly about putting the brown totes behind the wheel well instead of the bio cart. 

Wind: Central staff. Driver. Knows all the vehicles WAY too well. Doesn’t care about how the van is loaded as long as it all fits. Will rearrange the bio cart to fit behind the wheel well just to mess with Wild.

Hyrule: Central staff. Driver. Misses exits and has to flip around often, but somehow is never more than a few minutes late. They don’t ask, but he can and will go into detail about which roads are safe to speed on by how many miles per hour. No sense of direction but somehow knows his way around most of the northern regions. Wants the van loaded so nothing will fall over.

Some terminology:

TS: Team Supervisor. Answers phone calls and theoretically goes over stats with staff members once a month. Rarely does anything else unless they have someone who needs to be fired on their team.

Charge/Drive Lead: kind of like a shift supervisor? the final word at a given blood drive. Responsible for directing setup, sending ops records, and generally dealing with bullshit on the floor.

OJI: On the Job Instructor. Spends your first week or two with you showing you the ropes on the clock.

Doubles/2RBC/Power Reds: refers to both a donation type and a staff qualification. Doubles staff is responsible for setting up and Quality Checking the machines for the double red cell donation machines (also called Haemonetics or doubles machines) and staff must be Doubles certified to operate the machines and perform a double red cell donation procedure.

VP/HH: regular staff. Qualified to perform Health Histories/Physical Exams (HH) and Venipuncture (VP) or phlebotomy. 

History: HH and physical exam, done in booths off to one side of the donation beds. 

SpeedyPass: an approximation of our real-life "fill out the questions online beforehand and let us just scan the QR code at the end." If you've donated blood in the USA, depending on your region, you can probably guess what unnamed company I work for and what our RL equivalent is, because you've probably been asked to fill it out.

Stick: venipuncture. The act of "sticking" a needle in someone's arm.

takedown/disconnect/DC: collecting sample tubes from a donor and removing the needle from their arm

Reaction: when somebody feels funky while or immediately after donating.


	2. In no particular order

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, it's real. Yes, it's rushed. Yes, I have an overnighter tomorrow and no kind of self control because I'm *dreading* waking up tomorrow.  
> Yes, I promise I still love my job.  
> *suffers in Phlebotomist*

Hyrule was not going to scream.

Four and Twilight were both talking to the donor who had just come in. It was  _ never _ a good sign when two charges had to talk to a donor. Hyrule had done  _ fourteen _ sticks yesterday, he’d been sticking to Health Histories all day to give his poor feet a rest, and  _ both _ Four  _ and _ Twilight were talking to the guy who had just walked in. He did  _ not _ need this today, but that was okay because Hyrule was more afraid of his coworkers’ reactions than of being trapped with a grumpy donor and therefore Hyrule was not going to scream.

Twilight and Four finally walked away from the donor, who had pulled out his phone to make a call. Pasting a nervous smile on his face behind his mask, Hyrule wandered over.

“So what happened?”

Twilight looked exhausted. Four just looked ready to cut a bitch.

“He’s 45 minutes late. He and his family all have appointments, and they couldn’t find the place.” 

Hyrule stared at Twilight, baffled. 

“It’s... right here?”

Four snorted. “Yeah, well, the map takes you to the front of the building, don’t you know? So they went to the southern fixed site to try to donate there since they couldn’t find us here, and got rejected since they don’t have appointments.”

Hyrule did, in fact, know. This was his second time driving the equipment for this location. His first response  _ both _ times had been to  _ drive around the building _ . 

He was  _ not going to scream. _

“So... are they coming, then?” He hoped the answer was no. Let them just decide it’s not worth it,  _ please.  _ Grumpy donors were  _ not _ on his list of things he’d like to deal with this week. They weren’t on his list  _ any _ week.

Twilight’s face was resigned. “He’s calling his family and giving them directions.”

Four’s face was doing a careful impression of cheerful that looked a little more like  _ murderous _ . “Customer complaint?”

Twilight only gestures helplessly.

Right. This was where Hyrule should step in. Neither of them could handle this right now, clearly. 

He’d like to say that he strode over to the Health History booth, but in reality it was more of a mournful meander. He waved weakly to the man, who came and sat down, still talking on his phone. 

“-and we have appointments, so they have slots for us. Yeah, you have to drive around back of the building. There’s no sign, no... it’s got, like, these wing doors— you’ll see it. No, no sign. Kay. See you soon.”

Hyrule offered, “The van is parked just outsi...”

The man waved him off. “Love you, yep, just around the back of the building. Kay. Love you. Bye.”

“If... it’s a good landmark...” Hyrule wasn’t even sure he could be heard past his mask and the country music blasting from Twilight’s speaker. His donor made no response to his suggestion, only sat up straighter in his “Olympics 2002” coat and tucked his  _ fucking iphone  _ into his pocket.

Suddenly, Hyrule could see Molog from Starkid’s  _ Firebringer _ in his mind, clear as day, saying  _ “Shut up, you privileged fucks.” _

(Hyrule really needed to stop associating iPhones with privilege and wealth, but it was just so  _ hard _ when there was so obviously a pattern.)

Forcing himself to speak a little louder, Hyrule began.

“I can get you started, can I see some kind of ID?”

“Oh, yeah!” The guy started pulling out his wallet. Maybe Hyrule could ease things a bit here?   
“I heard you had some trouble getting here?”

“Well there’s no sign out front. You know, the map takes you to the front of the building, and there’s no sign pointing to go around.”

_ Not. Going. To scream.  _ The front of the building had to be walked to. There was no parking in front of the building, because it was built on a corner in a business lot, and had roads leading to other businesses in the bloc surrounding its little patch of personal cement and grass. It was 35 degrees out before the wind chill and none of them— Hyrule, Twilight, Four, Fable, or Warriors— was going to walk around the entire building to put up a sign that had been travelling in the freezing back of the pro-master, just so they could forget it and have to drive all the way back to retrieve it. Not a chance in hell.

Hyrule gave the donor a weak smile and pressed on. “I’ll just read this all to you and have you verify that it’s correct, okay?”

Demographics flew past in a blur, and Hyrule was thankfully one of the faster staff at Health Histories. If he could just scan the guy’s SpeedyPass—

“I’m just going to read you these three statements and have you answer whether or not they’re correct, and we’ll scan your QR code, okay?”

iPhone fucker gave him a pleasant eyesmile. “Oh, I didn’t do that.”

**_Not. going. To scream._ **

“Okay then! I’ll just have you sit here, answer the questions on our laptop here, and when you’re done just flip that “Ready” sign and we’ll get you going, okay?”

“”Alright, thank you!”

“Thanks for being here!” Hyrule could  _ feel _ the chipper dripping from his voice as he walked away from the booth to the back corner where he’d stowed his backpack. His head buzzed and his stomach ached— he hadn’t gotten a lunch, but they were just starting to get busy now...

He could just barely shove a nutterbutter cracker in his mouth and wash it down with some water before jumping back into the fray for a takedown.

A few minutes later iPhone Olympics jacket guy was on a bed, and Hyrule decided to try to smooth things a little further by getting one of the promotional shirts for him so he wouldn’t have to after he finished donating. “What size shirt do you wear?” he asked, sweetly as he could.

“Eh, sometimes medium, sometimes large. I won’t know until I try them on!”

_ Sir, we are in the midst of a global pandemic. You cannot try on the promotional shirts. _

Hyrule could only stare, wide-eyed. The words didn’t come out of his mouth, thankfully. Fable, who was taking his sample tubes, said it in a much nicer way anyway, and Hyrule managed to yank himself over to grab a Large for the guy and hand it to him nicely without saying another word to him besides “Thanks for donating today!”

It was over. He was done, he would go and eat his snacks at the recovery area and be on his way, and Hyrule could stop seeing his stupid face anymore. He took a deep breath.

The door outside made a sucking sound as someone entered. Three women walked in, and iPhone fucker looked over and waved to them eagerly.

_ Dangit. Forgot about the family. _

~Thanks for Donating!~

As his phone rang for the second time in as many minutes, Hyrule wanted to cry. Instead he reached over and hit *accept call* on the dash screen.

_ “Hey Hyrule, was that you who missed the exit?” _

“Yep, that was me.”

_ “How late are we looking at to get to the site?” _

Hyrule looked at his map. Before he missed the exit, it said an hour and seven minutes to their destination. Now it said an hour  _ twenty- _ seven.

“...about ten minutes. Not bad.”

_ “Okay, we’ll see you there then.” _

Twilight hung up.

It was eight miles to the next exit in the open desert, where he’d have to do a U-ie and come eight miles back. Hyrule had never been great at math, but if the speed limit was 80 and that was what his map was calculating his arrival time by.... He could shave that down to ten minutes.

In the end he was seven minutes late. Only three minutes behind Twilight and Warriors, who had stopped for breakfast. Wind, who got the exit right on the first try, was eight whole minutes behind Hyrule, who found himself both quietly satisfied and utterly determined  _ never _ to tell anyone the truth. It would get back to Time somehow, and he didn’t need that disappointed look on his conscience.

~Thanks for Donating!~

“And here’s where we put the cases. Let’s finish stacking these and we’ll take care of the warehouse stuff. Have you gotten that yet?” Hyrule asked.

The new kid, Spirit, looked a little overwhelmed. “Gotten which?” 

“If you’re ever here between ten and four-ish you can talk to Impa Tempus about getting warehouse access on your badge. You’d think Central staff would just automatically have it, since we drive so often, but no, you have to request it.”

“Impa... Tempus?”

Hyrule nodded. “Not to be confused with Impa Kakariko, the team supervisor; Impa Guardian, who’s a phlebotomist like us but also a loader; Impa Primi, in scheduling, or Impa Naginata, in management.”

Spirit frowned. “There are really that many Impas here?”

“Impaz is someone else. More of a legend than an employee really, I’ve only heard tales...”

~Thanks for Donating!~

Hyrule woke up on Sunday. Played on his phone. Watched Youtube. Read some articles online. Joined the Sunday School Zoom call. Played nonogram. Remembered he had an overnighter tomorrow and was working the rest of the week immediately afterward, with no cushion day.

_ Ah, so THAT’S where my debilitating anxiety went. Hello, old friend, please go away again soon. _

~Thanks for Donating!~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the impa thing fit... way too well. The sheer delight of arranging an Impa for every Ryan at work (yes, we have *FIVE RYANS*) was slightly overshadowed by the struggle of inventing last names for all of them, but you can do a lot of things when you throw your hands in the air and give up. This is just one of them.
> 
> So in all actuality, please donate blood. If you're not sure if you're elligible, find a donation center and try. We'll defer you if you're not, but we really do need to maintain a constant supply for hospitals whenever at all possible. Especially right now.  
> Please, please, *please* donate blood.
> 
> Just... please also don't be an asshole about it.


End file.
